Activist

Gets Life

In Killing

Of Doctor

Jury Finds Man Guilty

In Abortion Clinic Case

PENSACOLA — Stoically, Michael Griffin listened on Saturday as an Escambia circuit judge read the jury's verdict finding him guilty of murdering a doctor at an abortion clinic a year ago.

Ten minutes later, his hands clasped calmly in front of him, the anti-abortion activist stood to hear the same judge sentence him to life in prison without parole for 25 years.

In a case that abortion rights supporters said shows the growing violence they face, two sets of families and two sides of a fierce national debate reacted with tears, relief, calls for investigations and promises to rebuild.

Griffin's wife wept as the guilty verdict of first-degree murder was read. As her husband was led away, his brief wave was the only signal between the two.

Griffin's father, a Pensacola dentist, stared tearfully at a wall. He declined to comment on the verdict.

Meanwhile, the children of David Gunn, 47, who was shot three times in the back as he arrived at a clinic to perform abortions, said the justice system had worked.

"He [Griffin) needed to be robbed of his natural life just like he robbed my father of his," said David Gunn Jr., 23, a college student in Birmingham, Ala.

The elder Gunn was the first doctor killed during violence against U.S. abortion clinics. But clinic employees had predicted such violence after the arson, bombings and break-ins at their clinics nationwide.

On Saturday, Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, said Gunn's death was not an isolated incident and called for continued criminal investigations of the violence aimed at abortion clinics. Smeal said Gunn might be alive today if a buffer zone, such as the one established last year to keep protesters from a Melbourne clinic, had been in effect in Pensacola.

Gunn, of Eufaula, Ala., was shot while a protest was under way in front of the Pensacola clinic on March 10, 1993.

A challenge to the Melbourne barrier is scheduled to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in April. Anti-abortionists are fighting the buffer zone, saying it violates their right to free speech.

John Burt, an outspoken North Florida anti-abortion activist and regional director of Houston-based Rescue America, said that with the trial over, his movement can start trying to rebuild. Defense attorneys had tried to convince jurors that Burt inspired Griffin to kill Gunn and was the mastermind behind the shooting.

Burt said the shooting has hurt the anti-abortion movement by inspiring laws that restrict protests outside clinics.

"It has driven the moderates off," he said. "That leaves nobody but the shooters and bombers out there now."

Burt said he hates that Griffin will be away from his family for so many years but also hates the loss suffered by the Gunn family.

Prosecutors and Griffin's defense attorneys declined to comment on the verdict. But earlier Saturday, they summarized their cases during four hours of closing arguments.

Prosecutor Jim Murray depicted Griffin as an "assassin who had made up his mind to shoot another person" solely because of a difference in beliefs.

Murray asked jurors to find Griffin guilty of first-degree murder, saying the 45 minutes he waited outside the clinic for the doctor to arrive showed premeditation.

"There are 45 good reasons for you to vote for premeditation - the 45 minutes he lurked around the parking lot," Murray said.

Judge John Parnham's decision on Saturday to withhold two anti-abortion videos from the jury seemed to take strength from the defense case. Griffin's attorneys wanted jurors to watch the videos during their deliberations.

As his client sat passively at the defense table, attorney Bob Kerrigan told the jury to consider the evidence piece by piece. "Our defense is cornered squarely on the scientific evidence," he said.

The defense was most critical of gun residue tests done on Griffin's hands after the shooting. While the tests did not prove, according to state criteria, that Griffin had fired a gun, a weapons expert testified that he thinks the results showed the chemical worker had done just that.

Defense attorneys also tried to show that Griffin, 32, had been unduly influenced by Burt but were continually thwarted when witnesses recalled that Griffin always appeared calm even after viewing emotional anti-abortion films.

While police said Griffin confessed after the shooting, the defense tried to suggest that he was volunteering to be the fall guy for a crime committed by someone else.

"It seems illogical for a person to just walk up and say `I shot someone' unless in fact the defendant knew about the death and could have volunteered to take responsibility for it," Kerrigan said.

But the five-man, seven-woman jury rejected those theories and returned a verdict less than three hours after deliberations began.

The jurors, who have not been identified, left the courthouse under police escort after the verdict and did not talk to reporters.